Your Majesty, please intervene!

24th November 2014

The charity Friends of the Elderly has been telling people to
use Compare the Market. One of the big 5 switching sites who hide
deals from consumers. We wrote to the charity's Royal Patron - the
Queen - asking her to step in.

While we have no doubt that the motives and aims of Friends of
the Elderly are honourable, the business practices of Compare the
Market are not.

Working with the Sun newspaper we spent over 13 weeks analysing
the results of the five major price comparison websites - Compare
the Market, uSwitch, MoneySupermarket, Go Compare and Confused.

Our research - involving over 200 screenshots - found that these
sites hid the cheapest deals from consumers because they did not
get paid for them. The research was reported across the media
including on the front page of the Sun, Sky News, BBC Radio 4's
Today Programme, The Guardian and The Times.

At the time the Citizens Advice Chief Executive Gillian Guy
said: "Comparison sites shouldn't be pulling the wool over peoples
eyes about what is the cheapest deal."

Since we released our research several price comparison websites
have changed their websites so that they always show all deals to
consumers automatically. Compare the Market have not.

It is not appropriate for a charity like Friends of the Elderly
to be promoting Compare the Market while it continues to mislead
consumers and act dishonestly and unethically.

As Royal Patron to Friends of the Elderly we ask that you
retract Friends of the Elderly's promotion and support of Compare
the Market, and demand that the site stops hiding deals from
consumers.